The Conscience of an Anglican

Alan Jacobs has composed a thoughtful reflection on the Anglican Communion from a layman’s perspective. He is an AMiA guy from All Souls Anglican, Wheaton and teaches at Wheaton College. The full article can be accessed here.

Moreover, I remind myself that the churches of the Anglican world are governed by bishops, and I am not a bishop. One of the chief reasons I have held firm to Anglicanism over the years is that I believe that the threefold order of ministry—bishop, priest, and deacon—is the model taught by the apostles, the governance particularly approved by God. In this model I, as a layman—even though I am also a member of the priesthood of all believers—have a highly circumscribed role. If my pastor asks me to teach, I teach; otherwise I shut up. In the unlikely (and unwelcome) event of a bishop of the Church asking for my thoughts I would share them; otherwise I keep them to myself, at least in public. The decisions that will shape the future of the Anglican Communion will be made by bishops, not by laypeople, nor even by priests; if I care about that Communion—and I do—I had best be praying for those bishops, and not repeating the error of Job in darkening counsel by words without knowledge.

Like the Roman centurion, then, I am a man under authority, and also like him, I have some responsibilities of my own. Chief among them is to raise my son Wesley in the faith of the Gospel. Around four years ago now I left the Episcopal Church because—thanks to various changes in our parish’s life that followed the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire—I knew that if we stayed my son would be taught doctrines which I do not hold, and, just as important, would not be taught doctrines which I hold and believe it important for all Christians to hold. People who encouraged me to stay reminded me that, as (relatively) theologically knowledgeable persons, my wife and I could correct any sins of omission or commission when we got home. But the idea that the family holds the full responsibility for forming children in the faith, with the church being nothing more than a place of worship, is one of the ideas that I don’t want to teach my son. Another one is this: that bishops can ignore or repudiate significant portions of the doctrine and discipline of the Church—something the Bishop of Chicago did on a regular basis—and still be thought of as legitimate pastoral overseers for their people.

First, let me express my gratitude to eveyone assoicated with this site for your desire to see the divisions within the Church healed and your past contributions to that end.

The post is a beautiful illustration of how the Body of Christ is to function. We are not all called to ordination but this does not absolve us of responsibility. When we rejoice in performing our called functions as parts of the body and cease envying the supposedly more “glamorous” role to which other parts of the body are called, the Church will be far better off.

This article reminds me of how we ought to temper our “boldness” and “zeal” in ecclesiastical matters. Being a layman is an amazing privilege and, as Dix reminds us, is as much an order in the Church as Bishop is — yet this doesn’t grant me powers to act out as a watchman over the watchmen.

Also, there’s something humbling about genuine Church authority, because there’s something peculiar of Christ’s presence in those who keep rule in the House of God.